hill fights: first battle of KHE SANH

Hill Fights : First Battle of KHE SANH

Introduction

From January to April 1968 , the battle at Khe Sanh , perhaps the most controversial of the Vietnam War , raged for 77 days . The two opposing commanders , Generals William C . Westmoreland and Vo Nguyen Giap , used the Khe Sanh combat base and surrounding area for their own purposes For Westmoreland , Khe Sanh evolved from a reconnaissance platform to a potential invasion launch point , to a strongpoint and , finally , to a killing ground . For Giap , the base was a testing ground and then a staging

ground for an option play . Each general knew the other had plans for the area , and at times each thought he was manipulating the other In the end , Khe Sanh became the point at which two strategies of two generals converged

General Review

Khe Sanh had been garrisoned by Americans since 1962 . General William Westmoreland , commander of U .S . forces in Vietnam , felt maintaining a presence at Khe Sanh was critically important . It served as a patrol base for interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail , as the western terminus for the defensive line along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ , and as a barrier to Communist efforts to carry the fighting into the populated coastal regions of South Vietnam . By early 1968 , 6 ,000 Marines at Khe Sanh were surrounded by 20 ,000 North Vietnamese troops . The siege began on January 21 , 1968

On February 25 , General Westmoreland expressed doubt that the North Vietnamese could stand a long war . Responding to a question during an interview in Saigon about whether his fundamental strategy had been changed by the Tet Offensive , Westmoreland replied "Basically , I see no requirement to change our strategy

The key to the defense of Khe Sanh was overwhelming air power . On March 27 , senior Marine officers in Da Nang claimed that the effectiveness of allied airpower was so great that "they have no plans for pulling the Marines out no matter how much the enemy might increase his shelling at Khe Sanh

Other examples illustrate that the protective aerial umbrella around Khe Sanh was less that 100 percent effective . The NVA assault on the February , 8 that followed the mortar barrage resulted in 21 men killed 26 wounded . On February 25 , a two-squad patrol , instructed not to venture farther than 1 ,000 meters from the base perimeter , vanished . Out of these people nine were dead , 25 were wounded , another 19 missing

On April 5 , the 76-day siege was officially declared ended . Since 7 ,000 North Vietnamese were still reported to be in the vicinity of Khe Sanh however , the end of the siege was more official than real . The North Vietnamese had fired more than 40 ,000 artillery , rocket , and mortar rounds into the Marine positions during the siege

However , the battles in the area kept going until late in 1967 . It was as that time that Senior Marine commanders had felt that maintaining a large force at Khe Sanh was more of a liability than an...